Resumen de Minority language group status: A theoretical conspexus
Howard Giles, Laura Leets, Nikolas Coupland
This paper is an attempt to articulate basic questions in this fragmented field in pursuit of a more interdisciplinary framework, one which recognises the important mediating roles of individual cognitions as a complement to sociostructural analyses. As an untapped resource, there is an ever‐increasing number of, admittedly diverse, theoretical models in the sociopsychological areas of ethnolinguistic differentiation, ethnic language attitudes, second language learning, intercultural accommodation, communication breakdown, ethnic values, beliefs about talk, and so forth which are relevant for a more rounded understanding of minority language situations. These will be integrated into a framework leading to a set of predictive propositions which, it is argued, will elaborate the psychosocial climate under which different degrees of group level maintenance on the one hand, and the processing of majority‐minority encounters and the kinds of interactive strategies within them on the other, will prevail. Models are formulated which lead to the meshing and enriching of the sociological with the psychological which, at the very least, provide a coherent agenda for assessing, comparing and contrasting a wide variety of minority language processes at the individual and collective levels.
